


Gestalt

by ThisCatastrophe



Category: Naruto
Genre: (of sorts), Bounty Hunters, Eventual Fluff, Extortion, M/M, Multiple Religion & Lore Sources, Nobility, Rival Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-05-29 11:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCatastrophe/pseuds/ThisCatastrophe
Summary: Hairando, home to the Land of Lightning's summer palace, is home to two rival churches, a hoarde of nobles and a mysterious, rich bounty target.And, for the summer, it's also home to Sasori and Kakuzu.(Lightning worldbuilding, slow burn romance, heists and fluff.)





	1. The Unbroken Lord

**Author's Note:**

> A longer work commissioned by [shipcat](https://thatshipcat.tumblr.com/). This one's been a lot of fun to work on. Stay tuned for more; there's some fun worldbuilding and heists in the chapters to come.

Inside the soaring worship chamber, even Kakuzu’s whisper echoes slightly.

The ring of his voice is indistinct, but from the tiny reception-room behind it, Sasori can hear the pops of each implosive and the gentle taps of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the distinctive, too-natural motions of speech, inaccurate as it always is in mouths that have never had a need for pinpoint precision. It sifts gently through the ambient sounds of the wind that gusts in from the entryway, the taps of distant feet against the stone floors of the temple and the regular, swift scratch of Sasori’s pen against brittle parchment.

When the room falls momentarily silent he sets his pen aside, waiting for the shift in tone that denotes their victory or the shift of feet and cloth that lengthens their mission. A new voice, showing its age, starts up; its soft accent makes the words hard to distinguish, and Sasori strains to hear the meandering murmur of softened clicks and pops, rhythms he’s never had a reason to accustom himself to.

It’s his first long stint in Lightning country, he realizes is passing. There have been extended journeys through all of the other Five Great Nations, artist’s retreats in many of the smaller ones, travels into the Land of Bears in search of the sort of hardwood that’s extinct in the forests that dot the border of Wind country, forays into the Tea nation in search of a particularly beautiful body for his next project. Each tiny cluster of homes and lives looks more or less the same once he leaves the limits of his home nation: endless gravel roads that run below power lines and between little squat cities packed tight with the kinds of people he never wants to see again.

Not Lightning country. Not these stone towers and cities carved into mountains, even the poorest homes decorated in fine cloth and jewels, as if to spite the gods that made this inhospitable land. The murmurs shift again into Kakuzu’s smooth bass whispers and Sasori glances towards the light that spills in from a skylight.

He examines the stone floor, looks at the part of the room where there should be a seam at the wall and the smooth, dramatic arches that create the legs of the low stone bench where he sits with his crackling parchment and light summer cloak. The Church of the Unbroken Lord, says the paint on the front door; “Welcome to the whole and wonderful hands of God,” says the priest who tirelessly sweeps the front step with a fallen willow branch. On a suspicion, he folds his hands into his cloak, covering their seams and joints.

A footstep clicks into the chamber, sharp and clear and unmuffled. “We will be in touch,” Kakuzu says over his shoulder. His brows draw close in clear irritation, and he throws a blue summer cloak over his back without turning to his partner. “Your time is appreciated, Father Seinaru.”

Sasori doesn’t rush to follow Kakuzu from the Church of the Unbroken Lord; his partner won’t storm away too far, knowing their relationship as of late. He tucks the parchment and pen away in the breast pocket of his robes, unhurried, and follows the smell of fresh highland air to the entryway.

Kakuzu, arms folded, waits for him on the landing halfway down the steep staircase (all carved directly into the mountain, naturally) that leads up to the Church. Without the mask to cover his face, all the emotions he normally conceals are on display: today, it’s a mix of disgust, annoyance and urgency, the last of which grows in prominence with each passing day.

“Useless,” he comments, still in a low murmur. “The whole Church is useless.”

 

“Don’t say that to your protégé.” Sasori nudges one arm against Kakuzu’s and guides him down a smaller stairwell that curves around the mountain’s back. “He’ll throw a fit.”

“He’s no more my protégé than Deidara is yours,” Kakuzu sighs. “And I hope he’d have the good sense to be annoyed, too.”

The staircase curls under a nearly-horizontal tree; Sasori reaches up to brush a hand against the leaves. “Speaking of. Did you make any progress with this meeting?”

Ducking under the branches, Kakuzu gives a derisive snort. “Of course not. Every time I see Seinaru he talks more and more about how much he hates that monastery at the bottom of the valley, but nothing from the confessionals. Not about Lord Junteki, not about the daimyo, not even about that mad chemist in the Fifth Ward.” He huffs, blowing a stray strand of black hair out of his face. “We don’t have enough to offer him. It’s a stalemate.”

“Rare to see you so upset, Kakuzu,” Sasori says. “We will work something out. Patience.”

Below their feet, the staircase flattens into a rocky, broad clearing, dotted at the edges with strange, stunted trees and thick grass. Tiny children play rough games too close to the clearing’s edge, threatening in their too-serious ways to throw each other off the dusty path and into the air.

The town spreads down the mountain slopes, wedged in the less-treacherous heights of the lower peaks. As the houses descend, they decline in quality, and only the poorest families build their stilt-houses in the valleys, where coiling, dangerous rivers move thick with inland sharks and poisonous freshwater cuttlefish. Stone-carved houses and brick apothecaries and adobe guardposts filled with archers, not shinobi, sprout like weeds from the slopes, piled atop each other with roofs that interlocked to shade streets, all topped by vines and creeping plants growing like tapestry between them and spilling down to the cobblestone ground. Fine glass glitters on most buildings, some fitted in a full circle with water-clear windows constructed in two grand arching portions, others dotted with bottleglass built into clay walls; the city is glowing and radiant in the daylight, sparkling a thousand different stained-glass colors all at once.

A martial eagle calls above them as it swoops past, shedding a steel-grey feather in its wake. Against the tan and faded red and brightness of the city, it is comparatively a splash of jet black, visible in stark contrast even as it dives towards the most distant slum houses in the depths of the valley, seeking out snakes and stinging insects to dash against rocks higher up on the mountains. Sasori bends to retrieve its abandoned feather, twirling it thoughtfully as Kakuzu stares out over the late-morning sights of the city of Hairando.

He holds the eagle feather up, comparing its color to a stray strand of black hair that flutters away from Kakuzu’s headscarf. The hair is quite darker, he finds, and infinitely more satisfying to watch, though the feather’s sunbleached grey makes the ink color of the lock stand out, so he advances to tuck the feather behind his partner’s partially-exposed ear. As usual, Kakuzu looks stunning, smooth dark colors almost machine-perfect in their execution, unmarred by sun and age.

“Well,” he murmurs, lest any children be listening to ths on behalf of the townsfolk, “do you have any suggestions, Kakuzu?”

The thin fabric of the headscarf rustles like dry grass as Kakuzu unwraps it and shakes out its wrinkles. “We need to offer Seinaru something he can’t get otherwise.” He snaps the fabric tight and wraps it back around his hair, careful of the feather. “Something that we can offer Warime too, preferably. Just in case Junteki confessed anything important down there.”

Sasori glances down past the piled-up buildings and into the valley, where slum houses and fisher’s stands point towards the floating pavilion of the Golden Rift Monastery. Its raft, constructed of lashed-together trees felled by storms and rockslides, drifts in the current, bumping against riverbanks from time to time, poled once a week into the shantytown’s center for services. Priests bless the one-armed fishers who curse the bloodthirsty sharks, console the blinded beggar children who had the bad luck to bite down on the wrong part of the beached cuttlefish and welcome the visiting dignitaries with maybe not-quite-open arms; as celebrants of the broken and imperfect, the monks look every week at the rich folks just up the slopes with disdain.

“I doubt Junteki would go all the way down there for his spiritual needs,” Sasori comments. “Especially when the Unbroken Lord is safer.”

“But if he had some terrible secret…” Kakuzu mentions.

Sasori ponders a moment. Father Seinaru seems the type to run to a city guard in order to spill a noble’s confidential matters. Warime, the senior-most monk at the Golden Rift, on the other hand, is well known to Hairando’s criminal underbelly; just days ago he’d threatened one of the guards, holding a speared, thrashing manta ray out at the man in a vain attempt to protect a youth wanted for murder.

He relents. “You may be right. What do you suggest we offer the two?”

“Poison.”

He snorts and turns away from the sprawling vista towards the hanging bridge that connects the Unbroken Lord’s peak to the tallest mountain-top, which houses the daimyo’s castle. “You feel like taking a swim? I hear the cuttlefish are awfully vicious in the summer.”

Tiny rocks fall from the bridge and bounce off the strong canvases that shelter the uppermost homes of the lower slopes. “I didn’t mean the cuttlefish. I meant your poison.”

“ _My_ poison?”

“It’s the most—”

“—my special-made poison, derived from the smallest, rarest scorpions of Suna, triple-boiled for purity, mixed in a cinnabar chamber with a serpentine spoon and stored in a cobalt container designed to seep heavy metal particulate into the mixture? _That_ poison?”

“You can make more.”

Sasori allows himself a dry laugh. For the first time in months since he’s been away from Deidara, he feels marginally annoyed, but something deep in his mind says that Kakuzu has a point. “What a frivolous use for good poison. You’ll have to convince me better than that.”

“Don’t tell me you’re looking for an exchange, too?” Kakuzu ducks slightly as they pass under a colorful festival banner that hangs from the posts of the bridge.

“It’s possible.”

“Well.” They turn sharply to the left to climb up the gently sloping path, broad and rutted with carriage tracks, that leads to the daimyo’s summer palace. “If it’s on good terms, I’ll consider your exchange. Non-monetary terms, of course.”

Sasori smiles gently. “I’d never dream of parting you from your money.”

Tucking the eagle feather behind his ear once again, Kakuzu glances at his partner. “A sound decision.”

The daimyo’s summer palace blots out the sun high in the sky; most other townsfolk hide indoors or under shade trees from the burning heat, though the two strangers, accustomed to their deserts and humid jungles, simply enjoy the mountain breeze and continue along the empty road. There are preparations to be made and reports to be written before they return to the field.


	2. Float, Sink, Swim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pair of interlopers attend a dance.

It is nighttime, though the ballroom is steeped in late sunlight. The massive picture windows of the summer palace, arching high into the eaves and decorated with slivers of colored glass that cast little rainbows on the smooth granite floor, shower dancing pairs in dazzling light, turning the crystal and polished brass fixtures of the room into glowing beacons. Men and women, awash in golden sunbeams, spin in slow circles like the colorful fish living in the clear mountain streams.

From his place beside a tall, barred window, Sasori watches as a nobleman calls for his hawk. Safe in the basket of a hot air balloon, bright and gaudy, the nobleman leans to pluck at his anchor-rope before reaching up to grasp his hawk’s talons in his glove. The hawk deposits a hare in his other hand, which he holds out triumphant to the giggling gentlewoman beside him. They look happy and unperturbed; for a split second, Sasori is jealous of their easy bond.

A warm hand deposits a glass in his upturned palm.

“Ah,” he mutters. “I must have been distracted.” Sasori looks down at the pale amber drink and swirls it, pretending to consider throwing it back.

“It happens to the best of us,” Kakuzu replies. He steps around the redhead to look out the window, craning to see around an outcrop of carefully-stacked stones. “Those nobles have dangerous hobbies. I’ve never seen the appeal.”

Kakuzu’s drink is half empty, Sasori notes; he watches it intently, waiting for a good opportunity to swap their glasses. “Hawk hunting is popular among the nobles of the Land of Wind.” He recalls, with a note of irritation, the delegations of well-dressed men who trouped their camel caravans around the city, tailed by sharp-looking ospreys that ate up all the rodents that the poor families would otherwise rely on.

“Good to know that some things never change.” The bottom of Kakuzu’s glass clinks against the stone windowsill, resounds gently against the thick pane looking out at the open sky. “And the nobles here seem caught up in a… what is this dance, exactly?”

Sasori observes a couple that spins dizzyingly past, their long hair mixing together into one spiraling braid; he has to step back as the woman’s overlong skirts tickle at his shins. “I hear it’s a traditional dance in the Land of Waves. One of their ways of speaking to the gods, as far as I remember.”

Each partner wanders through the steps differently. The ballroom is a cacophony of hands and feet spinning around unsteady fulcrums. It’s painful to watch. “I’ve always thought that the poor’s dances to the gods should stay with them,” Kakuzu comments in a low rumble. “They aren’t offered many other comforts to call their own.”

In half-surprise, half-amusement, Sasori chuckles. “I never took you for a culture commentator.” He turns his head, looking up at Kakuzu’s strong jawline, painted silver and purple in the reflections from his fine metal collar inset with amethyst fragments. “Do you know any dances yourself?”

“As a matter of fact.” Kakuzu takes Sasori’s glass and sets it alongside his own on the sill. He steps away from the window and hooks a hand under his hair, shaking it off of his shoulders and letting it settle in broad fans on his back. It catches scattered light like a dark halo, and Sasori stares hard.

And again, in the light, Kakuzu’s skin drinks in the sun and glows. He almost rivals Sasori’s best puppets; he’s far and away better than any palace, all the world’s calligraphy and every painting he can think of at the moment. For a second, he considers whether or not those scars on his face would look better as wood seams; he itches to touch them to confirm their texture.

“I can teach you a dance or two,” Kakuzu says, one large hand outstretched. Sasori smiles and slips his palm against the hand, where he finds it fits perfectly. 

In the wild knots of lords and ladies, spinning in steps that make no sense to them, motion-prayers designed for another time and place, Kakuzu leads Sasori slowly through a series of broad, sweeping steps, pausing occasionally for the dangerous dervishes that circle nearby. In such a humid climate like the one he called home, Kakuzu explains, one can’t afford to work up a sweat in a leisure activity. The dances of Takigakure are slow, measured, nothing like the frantic paces set by the breezy coastal nations. 

The sweeping, grand colors of ladies’ dresses around them blur into mismatched rainbows in Sasori’s peripriary; any other day he’d focus close on each individual motion, tracking feet and eyes in case of an emergency, but with a strong hand coiled on the arch of his lower back, he feels safe enough to tune them out.

“Sasori,” his partner murmurs, “do you see Father Seinaru there?”

He focuses out of his cozy stupor and glances sideways, following Kakuzu’s pointed stare to the western windows, where a tiny group of holy men and politicians stand in the brightest light of the late sun. Front and center, Father Seinaru laughs with the Defense Minister, flapping one hand in an imitation of some sort of bird.

“You think he’s talking about the Warime incident, maybe?” Sasori asks.

Kakuzu turns him gently by the waist, slipping behind the Agriculture Minister and his wife to block their view. “He seemed amused by it earlier today.” The dancers bow to each other, and there comes a fragment of a view: Father Seinaru holding his stomach, chuckling and shaking his head. “If it’s anything to do with Warime, he’s bound to find it either hilarious or infuriating.”

Outside, the nobleman casts his hawk out to fly. It soars in tight loops around the balloon before jerking into a tight dive, brushing close to the razor-sharp rocks of the mountainside. Outlined dimly: a dying hare, neck snapped, brilliant red blood splattering the rocks that it once called home, a perfect foil to its elegant killer.

“Sasori,” Kakuzu says, “give me your poison.”

“This again?”

Their dance continues unperturbed, though Sasori would rather not admit that the close contact soothes the irritation of a rehashed conversation. “Seinaru needs something he can’t get elsewhere,” urges Kakuzu in a tight, rushed voice. “And he doesn’t want to publicly admit it, but he told me that Warime scares him.”

“Scares him…”

“Laugh if you want, but Warime is popular amongst the poor and the criminals. And there’s more of that class than the sort of people that the Unbroken Lord will accept.” Just barely, Sasori can see the neighboring mountain peak through a passing window, surrounded by tiny figures of priests who anoint the rock-hewn Church in fine oils and rough gems as their evening devotions. “The Unbroken Lord relies on power, Sasori. Morally and socially. They need the poor devotees who idolize perfection so that the upper class keeps its hold on Hairando. The Golden Rift, and Warime himself… they’re dangerous for the Church in more ways than one.”

Down in the ravine, Sasori imagines the floating temple of the Golden Rift as it poles along the river, visiting slumhouses with offerings of thin gruel for the sick and elderly. Warime’s voice carries up to the mountains on particularly silent nights, not particularly beautiful but plaintive, calling on the gods to love and care for the broken and the weak. He admits that the warbling prayer-calls remind him of the priests of Suna, standing on the peaks of their temples at high noon and begging the skies for rain.

“You think Seinaru wants Warime dead?”

“I think he needs Warime dead.”

The music dies down and the room stills, waiting to hear the next strains. “And you?” Sasori asks. “Do you want Warime dead?”

Kakuzu watches the chamber musicians and removes his hands for just a moment, clapping politely along with the crowd as the conductor bows with a sweeping motion. “I don’t care who lives and who dies,” he replies. “But I’d wager that Warime wants Seinaru dead, too. Maybe not as much as Seinaru wants him gone, but they both stand to benefit.” The string section starts in on a quick traditional jig; nearby couples leap and giggle in thrill. “So I suggest we make that possible for the both of them.”

“You want two community leaders to poison each other,” Sasori says.

“You’re twisting my words.”

“I’m not twisting your words. You want them to poison each other.”

Kakuzu sighs and replaces a hand on Sasori’s waist. “Well, then, yes.”

“Hm.” Sasori turns his head to watch Father Seinaru, again visible in quick peeks between dancers. “A good plan, I must admit.”

The light in the ballroom turns red and soft, lighting Kakuzu’s sharp cheeks and jaw in diffuse, warm color. Ignoring the musical cues, Sasori reaches up to touch the seams along Kakuzu’s face, tracing a finger along the ripples where skin has been stitched together. “Is that a yes?” Kakuzu asks; Sasori marvels at the fine motions of muscles below the seams.

“You’ll owe me,” he clarifies.

“I’m alright with that.”

Later that night, Sasori draws a chart of a puppet with an ear-wide grin and almond eyes inlaid with emerald set on dark granite. Nothing he can sketch turns out correct. Every jointed jaw looks too serpentine, not enough like his partner. He throws every last piece of parchment in the trash and watches the moonlight instead.


End file.
